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Characters in The Freeport Venture. All art is by Inuhoshi
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Sunset and Allies
Sunset Shimmer
By the time of the main story's present, she has become the Archon of Freeport.
- Adaptational Badass: Not that Sunset is weak in the original show, but she generally doesn't really show off much magical skill due to living in a world where magic is rare and limited, and
Word of God is that she's weaker than Twilight due to never finishing her studies under Celestia. By contrast, this version of Sunset is The Archmage with immense magical power and skilled enough to quickly pick up on any magical subject she sets her mind to. - An Arm and a Leg: Damage she sustains fighting Starlight during Freeport Venture results in her being hospitalized for a long time while recovering. She choses to have her leg chopped off instead.
- The Archmage: Archmagus, actually, but yes. While she hasn't been named Archmagus in Equestria yet, she pressured the Freeport Council into making her the first official Archmage of Freeport, and she has both the magical power and knowledge to back it up.
- Artificial Limbs: She gets a metal leg after the events of Northern Venture.
- Badass Bookworm: She's only second to the most experienced of magi when it comes to reading, but her studies has definitely paid off. Her magical prowess is good enough for her to have at least a basic understanding of practically all fields of magic, including the illegal ones.
- Barrier Maiden: She can conjure poewrful shields, enough so that she holds of Blackfyre's Breath Weapon long enough to casually amuse him.
- Celibate Hero: Sunset never shows any particular interest in either mares nor stallions, and Strumming even points out that she's the age where most mares go gaga for boys. The most interest she shows in anyone is asking Twilight to dinner in the distant sequel.
- Chronic Hero Syndrome: A problem she struggles with. She vehemently refuses to sit on the sidelines when there are innocents to protect, which often results in her pushing past the point of reason. In Northern Venture, she'd rather amputate her own wounded leg than sit out the war against Blackfyre.
- Didn't Think This Through: She starts out with the tendency to jump into things without properly thinking her plans through. For instance, she didn't really put a lot of thought into what she was going to do after leaving Celestia beyond "head as far away from Equestria as possible", something she only realizes when she arrives at Freeport with little money, no contacts and no means to make either.
- The Dreaded: She builds up quite the reputation. By Breaker of Chains, a hired thug drops everything and scampers of the moment he realizes he's fighting the Archmagus.
- Duality Motif: Her cutiemark is a sun split between red and yellow. She originally assumed it referred to her affinity for pyromancy and connection to Celestia, but it later turns out she has a knack for using magic that would usually be considered opposites. She's mastered a technique that involves draining whatever you need from the environment, then use the absence you leave behind to fuel a spell of the opposite. When she drains away heat for her fire spell, she uses the cold left behind to fuel ice spells. In the entire series, we only see this done by Sunset and Rising Fire. And they may be the same person.
- Exact Words: In The Freeport Venture, Sunset accepts the Council of Thirteen's offer to destroy Metal Mome's golems and all existing notes on how they were made. She never said anything about the very detailed memories she pulled from Mome’s mind, though.
- Foil: To Twilight, though she doesn't appear in the story. Twilight idealizes Celestia to the point of hero worship, while Sunset is fiercely independent, and despises when Celestia intervenes on her behalf. Twilight has a great relationship to her parents, Sunset... not so much. Twilight had to be forced out of Canterlot, while Sunset went even before Celestia wanter her to. Also, Sunset likes quesadillas.
- Genius Bruiser: See above for the genius part. As for the bruiser part, she's just about the most powerful magician in Freeport, and Strumming and Puzzle have multiple times used her as hired muscle.
- In-Series Nickname: Strumming likes to call Sunset "bacon-mane". Free Mind changelings, like Kukri and Puzzle, call her "The Shimmer-Mare"
- Mage Tower: Sunset ends up building one made of obsidian to live in in Freeport, partly because it’s traditional, partly because it means she has to buy less land.
- Magic Knight: More Magic than Knight, but she is capable with weaponry as well, particularily the legendary sword Chainbreaker after she liberates it from a museum thief.
- Meaningful Name: Just as in canon, her name both connects her to the sun-princess Celestia, while also putting her in opposition to her.
- Person of Mass Destruction: She not only specializes in fire and ice magic, she's a master of it, able to easily level buildings as a matter of routine.
- Properly Paranoid: When Strumming approaches Sunset Shimmer humbly, apologizes for her earlier antagonism, offers her food, and doesn't try to steal any for herself, Sunset promptly assumes the meal has been poisoned. She's right, but Strumming does want to reconcile, and is Just Following Orders, however reluctantly.
- Semi-Divine: After giving up her Alicorn potential to defeat Blackfyre, she doesn't become an alicorn (and never will), but she does have some alicorn-ness in her. Most notably, she doesn't grow wings, but she has a sliver of pegasus magic, allowing her to walk on clouds without casting a spell first.
- Series Goal: Her main goals are A: To take over Freeport and rid it off corruption, and B: Become an alicorn. She's well on her way to the first goal, having installed a close ally on the Freeport council and gained political influence rivaling the other councilors, but she eventually gives up on alicornhood during Northern Venture.
Kukri Doo
- The Apprentice: She becomes Sunset's apprentice in The Hunted.
- Cover Innocent Eyes and Ears: Sunset makes her look away in The Hunted, when Kunai leaves a timed firebomb next to an incapacitated enemy. Doesn't prevent her from hearing it.
- Insistent Terminology: Kukri is not a grub. She's eleven-and-a-half years old!
- Tagalong Kid: Of the main recurring cast, she is by far the youngest despite accompanying Sunset on a lot of her adventures.
Puzzle Piece
- Interspecies Romance: A changeling in a relationship with a pegasus.
- Knowledge Broker: He makes his living as this, ferreting out various kinds of information and selling it to whoever can pay his fees.
Strumming Heartstrings
Strumming and Puzzle.
A cousin of Lyra Heartstrings working as a spy for the Equestrian government. She's sent to Freeport when Sunset sets up residence there, in order to keep tabs on her.- Just Following Orders: Strumming would really like to be friends with Sunset, it's just that she has orders to spy on the runaway and later confine/keep an eye on/recapture her. Later, when Sunset uses Dark Magic while escaping, she ''must'' be a warlock and thus ''obviously'' seeking to be the next King Sombra.
- Laser-Guided Karma: In Blood Debts, Strumming's past actions catch up with her when she is grievously injured and nearly killed by the nephew of the very same bokor she murdered out of personal prejudice.
- Strong Family Resemblance: For all intents and purposes, she's an older version of Lyra with wings and no horn.
- Van Helsing Hate Crimes: Strumming really, really hates warlocks — a term that, as far as she's concerned, includes any habitual user of what she considers dark magic. Normally, this is a fairly justified feeling, but Strumming takes it to extremes, as seen with her execution of the bokor in Blood and Iron. While the things he was doing were morally questionable, he wasn't actually harming anyone — he only used corpses he found washed up on shore and used his zombies as nothing more than free labor for his plantation, and while he did attack Sunset and Strumming, they had already broken onto his property and attacked his zombies and elementals. None of this matters to Strumming: he used illegal magic, therefore he had to die. This comes back to bite her, and bite her hard. Not only is she nearly killed as blood debt by the nephew of the bokor, but this surpreme act of douchebaggery gives Sunset the incentive to take charge and threaten Strumming with de facto banishment if she acts out of line.
Freeport
Starlight Glimmer
- Adaptational Relationship Overhaul: In canon, Starlight and Sunset meet in one of the Equestria Girls specials, and become fast friends. Here, they met over a decade earlier, and do not like each other at all, largely due to Starlight getting in over her head resulting in Sunset having to deal with her.
- The Bait: In Blood and Iron, since the zombies that were periodically attacking her commune were already focusing their efforts on her, her role in Sunset's plan is to go out in the open to lure the undead horde into Sunset's trap.
- Cool Sword: Chainbreaker, though it's not actually hers (It belongs in a museum, though Sunset has a better claim to it) is not only pristine despite its age, but it has enchantments and historical significance.
- The Dragon: Unwilling to Blackfyre, after he more or less forced her to make a pact with him, sealed with runes carved into her back that will turn her into a monster if she doesn't obey.
- Foil: To Sunset. Both are very powerful unicorns, both are extremely dedicated to a goal (equality or alicornhood) and won’t shut up about it, and both have gone back on their ideals when faced with imprisonment (Starlight using her family’s wealth and connections, Sunset using dark magic). The main difference is Sunset is more aware of her failures and much less of a hypocrite. Northern Venture also revealed that Starlight had forged a pact with the dragon Blackfyre, not unlike how Sunset gained her power from being Celestia's student. But whereas Sunset studied under Celestia willingly, and later left to reassert her independence, Starlight is under threat of force and compulsion to do her master's bidding.
- Future Badass: Her fake Robin Hood campaign in Freeport, subsequent attack by Rising Fire, and later servitude under Blackfyre? All took place at least a decade before she met Twilight Sparkle.
- Hypocrite: Starlight is one in much the same way she is in canon, since her motivation for making everypony equal is pretty obviously a way to make sure nopony’s better than her rather than actually helping ponies, as she claims. When she robbed a bank to give the money to the poor, claiming entirely altruistic reasons, she kept three quarters of the money for herself.
- Just Like Robin Hood: What she claims to be doing when she first meets Sunset in Freeport. But the poor is only getting a quarter of her loot, the rest she keeps for herself.
- Magically-Binding Contract: Her deal with Blackfyre is sealed with numerous runes carved into her back. All would be rather unpleasant if they were to be activated.
- Scary Impractical Armor: If this is to be any indication, the armor she uses in Northern Venture has large metal wings that almost certainly serves no other purpose than letting people yank them, bigass horns, and a mouthguard that barely guards anything.
- Unskilled, but Strong: She has plenty of raw magical power, perhaps as much as Sunset herself, but she doesn’t have any proper training in how to use it effectively. In contrast to Sunset, who can use a wide repertoire of spells as the situation demands, she's limited to basic telekinesis, shield spells and crude blasts of force. Her temper problems don't help, either.
Council of Freeport
The ruling council of Freeport is a group of equines of ambiguous race and gender that do all their work in secret.
- Everyone Has Standards: They are very corrupt, but they also fiercely uphold Freeport's ban on slavery. When one of their members is exposed as having dealt in slavery, they are immediately ousted.
- Expy: Of the Masked Lords of Waterdeep, another council of anonymous figures who use magical masks and robes to hide their identities, who rules over a port town with a reputation for being a bit of a wretched hive.
- Legacy Immortality: They wear exactly similar masks to make sure no one can know when one has been killed and replaced.
- Omniscient Council of Vagueness: Invoked. During their rise to power, they used their anonymity to hide from those in power, as well as be a symbol. Since no one knew who they were, they could be replaced easily while appearing invulnerable. This is continued in modern day, since the appearance of immortality is a lot more useful when one of your neighbors is an actually God Empress.
Other Locales
Rising Fire
Her former self (Spoilers)
A lich leading the undead army assaulting Starlight's commune in Blood and Iron. She is originally from the Sombra timeline seen in "The Cutie Remark", having come to the "main" timeline to seek revenge on Starlight for having retconned hers out of existence.
- Fallen Hero: She used to be the Sunset Shimmer from the Sombra timeline, and was just as benevolent and well-intentioned as the one whose timeline she invaded. Decades of isolation in a dead world and an obsessive desire for vengeance ended up turning her into the crazed Knight Templar she is now.
- Knight Templar: She has no issue whatsoever with killing an entire village's worth of innocent people and raising them all as zombies in her quest to avenge her world. When Sunset calls her out on this, she frames her intentions as a noble sacrifice on her part to preserve a greater number of lives.Sunset Shimmer: So you'll murder an entire village of innocents just to get some cannon fodder? You have a pretty twisted idea of sparing innocent lives.
- Necromancer: She is highly skilled in necromancy, having created an army of powerful, unique undead and turned herself into a lich.
- Our Liches Are Different: She is a fully self-aware and intelligent skeletal undead with a great deal of magical power, and is consistently referred to as a lich. She does not appear to have a phylactery, though.
- Precrime Vigilante Execution: Tries to kill Starlight for a crime she chronologically hasn't committed yet, and has no backing authority except her own obsession with avenging the destruction of her world (see Roaring Rampage of Revenge below). What keeps it from being an Injustice is that Starlight is guilty, she's just not guilty yet.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Her motivation. She comes from the timeline from "The Cutie Remark" where Equestria is at war with Sombra. Her world was destroyed when Starlight and Twilight changed the timeline afterwards, and everything she's done — including becoming a lich, travelling to another timeline and raising an undead horde — has been in order to kill Starlight in revenge. One of the various crooks in her plan? She arrived ten years early. Starlight hasn't even heard of Twilight Sparkle yet, to say nothing of hatching her plan to change the past.
- Winged Unicorn: She started out as a normal unicorn, and gave herself batlike wings of skin and metal, alongside an alicorn's stature, as part of her transformation into a lich.
King Sombra
The King Sombra from the Crystal War timeline, who waged war against Equestria. That timeline's Sunset originally thought him to be the cause of her world's temporal apocalypse, and sought him out to make him pay for that and for the many other atrocities he committed. In doing so, she also learned of the actual cause of the apocalypse, setting her towards the main canon's timeline.
- Cessation of Existence: His eventual fate. After Sunset defeats him and reduces him to a skeleton, she raises him as an undead soldier. When she realizes he rose as a self-aware, intelligent undead like Rainbow and Rarity, she eagerly tears through the necromantic magic animating him to learn more about it, destroying it in the process. She does this until she obtains his soul, which she casually snuffs out, condemning Sombra to oblivion.
- Dem Bones: After his duel with Sunset, she reduces him to a charred skeleton and raises him as an undead soldier for her army.
- Evil Overlord: He set himself up as the tyrannical ruler of the Crystal Empire, giving it a drastic makeover focused on slavery, ominous towers and black jagged crystals everywhere. He then conquered the yaks, caribou and northern Equestria, with plans to force all the rest of the world under his tyranny by means of armies of mind-controlled thralls, shadow demons, mindless undead and a few power-hungry traitors who went over to his side.
- Omnicidal Maniac: His eventual goal after more-or-less realizing how the multiverse works: he intends to concentrate the power of the time storms and unleash it across the multiverse, killing every living being in every universe and timeline in order to lash out against the perceived meaninglessness of existence.
- Sorcerous Overlord: To the Crystal Empire and other lands he conquered, being both their undisputed and tyrannical ruler and one of the most powerful warlocks to ever live.
- Straw Nihilist: After concluding that the timeline branches every time a choice is made, thus creating an infinite number of multiverses where every possible outcome of everything is happening, he comes to the conclusion that absolutely nothing matters. If every choice is made at every junction and infinite copies of you exist doing everything you didn't do, individual agency and accomplishments are then utterly meaningless and he might as well just blow up the whole multiverse.
- Try to Fit That on a Business Card: He introduces himself to Sunset by spouting off a ridiculously long list of titles and cognomens, each more grandiose than the last. It serves to perfectly encapsulate his bloated ego and sense of self-importance.He cleared his throat. "In better times, a herald would have seen to this for me, but... I am Emperor Sombra the Ever-Victorious, first of my name; Dread Master of Crystal Empire, King of the Yaks, High King of the Caribou, Rightful Master of Ponykind, Lord of the North, Protector of the Realm of Ice and Snow, Inheritor of the Crystal Empire, the Smokebound, Coryphaeus of Wisdom and Benevolence. I am the Breaker of Vanhoover and the Ravager of Coldharbor; the Son of the Arctic Winds, the Morning Star of the Empire, the Iron-Willed Commander of Those Who March South; the Grand Emperor Who Is A Perfect Incarnation of all that an Emperor Should Be; the One Who Stands Alone in his Utter Perfection, and the Greatest Lord and Master Who Ever Was or Will Be."
- Villain Respect: He seems to hold at least a degree of respect for Sunset, praising her skills in necromancy and offering her the chance to rule their dead world alongside him.
- We Can Rule Together: At the beginning of their face-off, he invites Sunset to rule alongside him as his empress as they remake the world in their image. Sunset immediately rejects the offer, something that Sombra takes in stride.
Princess Celestia
Celestia with a young Sunset
Sole monarch of Equestria and local Physical God. She's mostly associated with the sun, as she's the only being currently active in the world powerful enough to move it on her own (though she does the same with other celestial objects). She is Sunset's mentor and considers her a surrogate daughter. She has a central role in A moment in the Sun, and makes occasional cameos, but is rarely in the limelight for long.- All-Powerful Bystander: Justified. She's powerful enough that she could wipe the entire archipelago off the map, and could easily solve any problem Sunset encounters, but she's generally too busy ruling Equestria. If she were to get too involved in Freeport, it could be a disastrous political incident.
- Big Good: Non-action throughout most of the stories, though the events of Northern Venture force her to take a more active role.
- The High Queen: Very much so, Celestia is a wise and beloved monarch who's rule has kept Equestria peaceful and is respected even by her political enemies. This story being set years before the events of Friendship is Magic, she is also sole ruler, with her sister still imprisoned in the moon.
- Parental Substitute: Sunset very clearly sees Celestia as a mother figure, moreso than her absentee biological mother at least. Celestia for her part cares a great deal for Sunset, but has a hard time dealing with her student's more rebellious tendencies.
- Small Role, Big Impact: She only has a central role in A Moment in the Sun, but she's the sole reason Sunset's as powerful as she is.
Argentium the Runescaled
- Big Damn Heroes: Arrives just in time to kick Blackfyre's flank, just as he has Sunset at his mercy. With a Pre-Asskicking One-Liner from Sunset to boot.
- Chekhov's Gun: Gives Sunset a runestone meant to help her train and increase her power. Sunset later uses it to give her a powerboost in her fight against Starlight.
- Meaningful Name: Runescale is more a title, but her scales are actually engraved with runes.
- Our Dragons Are Different: Compared to the dragons in the show, which are generally depicted as intelligent but not especially wise, Argentinum is a wise old sorcerous dragon and mentor to many a young mage.
- Sacred Hospitality: While Sunset's mother is a dear student of hers, she did attack a guest in her house, and was promptly punished.
Blackfyre
Blackfyre with Starlight
A dragon, equal to Argentium. Where Argentium sided with Celestia during the war against Sombra, Blackfyre sided with Sombra. After the war, he surrendered, and was placed under house arrest in his lair. A pioneer (or inventor) of the flesh carving type of runes, and creator of the blightspawn.- Blood Magic: Flesh Carving uses the flesh of living beings (not necessarily blood, though that certainly is part of it) to influence and mutate living beings. This includes carving magical runes into the flesh of living beings, mutating them beyond recognition, or creating flesh constructs, such as new limbs.
- Body Horror: He's a master and possibly inventor of the Flesh Carving form of Runecraft. See Blood Magic
- Brains and Brawn: Part of what makes him so dangerous is the fact that he's very experienced, very knowledgeable, and, you know, a big fuck-you dragon.
- Breath Weapon: He demonstrates it quite clearly when burning Coldharbor to the ground.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Inverted, and possibly justified. At the end of the war, Sombra was banished (killed in practice). Blackfyre was placed under house arrest. Though this may be a pretty horrifying punishment for a dragon.
- Evil Counterpart: To Argentium. Both are immensely powerful dragons proficient in runecraft who participated in the Crystal Empire/Equestrian war. Whereas Argentium allied with the Equestrians, Blackfyre worked with Sombra. He's also more prone to use flesh carving, something Argentium considers abhorrent.
- Evil Sounds Deep: His voice is described as deep and subsonic, and he is a horribly evil dragon.
- Power Nullifier: He develops a blight spawn who's scream can specifically nullify unicorn magic.
Solar Shimmer
Solar Shimmer, with Sunset in the foreground
Sunset's father. He's been on the tail of a dangerous warlock for several decades, and therefore been out of Sunset's life for most of it.- Daddy Had a Good Reason for Abandoning You: He did have a reason, as he was chasing down a dangerous warlock who had already killed a dear friend of him. That said, Sunset does not consider this reason good enough.
- Disappeared Dad: Solar was absent for most of her childhood, being occupied chasing down an infamous warlock who killed his best friends.
- Evil Former Friend: The Warlock he's been hunting was his childhood best friend and Sunset's godmother, believed killed by the warlock.
- Family Theme Naming: Like Sunset, his name is sun-based, "Solar" meaning of or related to the Sun.
- He Who Fights Monsters: Sunset fears that his time hunting warlocks might have influenced him worse than she thought. She's wrong, but unfortunately not enough.
- Parents as People: Solar was so occupied with his work for most of Sunset's childhood that she hardly ever saw him, and struggles to connect with her when they meet up as adults. His absence has also caused a rift between him and his wife, which culminates in a divorce.
